Greece’s Tsipras Denounces Austerity to Break Election Deadlock
The headquarters of the Greek political party that could bring down the European economy lies in a rundown neighborhood in central Athens. Not far away in one direction, a municipal soup kitchen feeds the city’s rising number of poor. Around another corner, a medical charity caters to illegal immigrants and the newly uninsured. The décor inside party headquarters is similarly modest.
Neon tubes shine down on worn blue linoleum. The walls are streaked with age. The only room in the building with a fresh coat of paint is the office of the party’s leader, Alexis Tsipras, the 37-year-old radical leftist who has campaigned on renegotiating Greece’s debt deal, Bloomberg Businessweek reports in its June 4 edition.
“Sometimes we have television cameras in there,” said Maria Kalyviotou, one of the chain-smoking young volunteers who man the party’s media operations. “That’s why we painted that room.”
The party’s very name, Syriza --- the Coalition of the Radical Left --- describes where its members see themselves on the political spectrum: on the fringes. Just outside Tsipras’s office hangs a photograph of a crowd celebrating the 1959 Cuban revolution; elsewhere, the hammer and sickle is a common sight.
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-05-31/greece-s-tsipras-denounces-austerity-to-break-election-deadlock
= new reply since forum marked as read
...a chain-smoking P.R. volunteer and a modest political headquarters...
...and most of all, agog at such people--people who can't afford paint, people who like Cuba and black and white photos, for godssakes--having POWER! It is appalling!
